


The Potion

by Happyorogeny



Series: The Drow [2]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Forgotten Realms, The Legend of Drizzt Series - R. A. Salvatore
Genre: Alcohol, Attempted Drugging, Drugs, Emotional Manipulation, Frustration, Gen, Imprisonment, Jarlaxle being Jarlaxle, M/M, Sexism, artistic theft, drow being drow, suggestion of Dubcon, suggestion of noncon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 14:34:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17899961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Happyorogeny/pseuds/Happyorogeny
Summary: "If I'm not back in three hours come and get me." Jarlaxle had been extremely specific. "Come get me and come alone. Don't be seen. Don't get caught."





	The Potion

"If I'm not back in three hours come and get me." Jarlaxle had been extremely specific. "Come get me and come alone. Don't be seen. Don't get caught." 

Easier said than done when this whole damn city was constantly crawling with drow. The underdark didn’t adhere to a classic day and night cycle, nor did their activities and movements have any semblance of rhythm. With their ability to rest themselves completely in four hours, the city seemed to him entirely chaotic and ever busy. The only predictable pattern was that the streets emptied in front of priestesses and that the men moved in noisy mobs. 

Worse yet, he had found a flaw in himself. He was used to having free range of the rooftops in human cities. But here the drow seemed determined to build right up into the cavernous ceiling. Even where he could find a flat surface he now had to compete for space with couriers, running gang battles, jumping spiders and various other assassins and spies. His ability to predict and evade them was…lacking. 

There was little he loathed quite as much as discovering he lacked in ability. In anything. 

It was fortunate that he had accepted Jarlaxle’s lend of an invisibility cloak. Not that he needed one, strictly speaking, to vanish and avoid detection. An assassin that drew notice didn’t tend to be a successful one. But he had to admit that it accelerated his journey, for he was a rarity down here in being a human that wasn’t a broken down husk. It tended to attract the wrong kind of attention. 

Although with drow, every kind was the wrong kind. 

There, the house. A lesser family of drow nobles from what Jarlaxle said, with only twenty members of the household. The matron was an extremely minor priestess and they were mostly known for their artwork, woven spidersilk tapestries of such beauty and delicacy that they decorated almost every upper house and temple. Jarlaxle claimed that the secondary consort Mizzan was the one who really kept it all together, who created the artwork that the house matron then claimed as her own. 

“He is very skilled I think. He had forged documents so that their bloodline makes sense and cuts out the heretics. Here and here, you see the smudges?”

Frankly he didn’t think the tapestries were terribly impressive at all, tending as they did to relate to religious iconography and so depicting large spiders and the destruction of human settlements. And they were dull to his eye, devoid of colour in much the same way as their buildings and clothing. He had instead looked at Jarlaxle and wondered how much of his jewel-bright wardrobe was a political statement and how much was personal preference. 

Jarlaxle was skilled to survive down here while flaunting his defiance so openly. Competent enough that Artemis wanted to observe him and learn his secrets. 

Why had he been so insistent that Artemis come out and find him? Jarlaxle was surely well able to maneuver around the city on his own and had any number of surprisingly devoted followers. He half expected a trap, that the drow meant to kill someone and then have Artemis appear as a human scapegoat. As if people hadn’t tried such tricks on him before. 

He waited for the street to clear before moving across, careful to avoid puddles least a stray splash or ripple alert any watching eyes. Drow were much harder to evade than the average guard, being primed from a young age to spy danger and listen for knives in the dark. They were a challenge to sneak past, even for him, and for all the grim danger down here he couldn’t deny it was satisfying to succeed. 

And for all his frustration this escapade gave him the chance to rummage around through Jarlaxle’s inventory and he had done so with great interest. This little black piece of silky fabric, he said, would turn into a hole when thrown against a solid surface, allowing the bearer to walk through. 

A little part of him was irked. He had had to learn how to climb walls and infiltrate heavily guarded fortresses by sheer skill alone, whereas Jarlaxle got to cheat because of money and thievery and sweet-talking his way into all kinds of treasures. But then, wasn’t that a skill in and of itself? A skill he had never quite gotten to grips with, given his rather acerbic approach to networking and social affairs. Artemis hated to think he lacked in anything, but never had he had it so sharply thrown into relief. 

Those thoughts left him as he slipped into the room. His skin prickled. The air was thick with the aftermath of violence. He mapped it swiftly, ready to throw himself back outside. Underdark dwellings were always dark to a human eye, but he could see enough to tell him a story. An overturned table, a bottle of wine spilled, the wreckage of three glasses. Throwing knives wedged into furniture. Scorch marks that matched those of a fireball. 

The room must be soundproofed, for no one to come investigate. Surely even more rambunctious business negotiations didn’t involve fireballs.

 _"Abbil?_ Is that you?" 

He released a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding and eased towards the side room, mindful of trickery. 

"What happened?”

Jarlaxle sat upright against the far wall, pouring himself a glass of wine. Blood glinted on the stone above him. He had been thrown and not moved from there since.

"Your timing is impeccable as always." Jarlaxle toasted him from the floor. “I would offer you some, but it’s laced with a rather nasty compliance potion.” 

This was a bedroom. His stomach clenched so violently that for a moment he felt ill. Jarlaxle was fast and clever and laden down with magical trinkets, and often used sex and pleasure as part of his negotiations. And yet, down here the unbalance of the surface world was reversed. 

But there lay a corpse. Her neck had been broken. Artemis was briefly impressed, for she was a good thirty pounds heavier than Jarlaxle and half a head taller. The male drow on the bed was a different matter. He looked as if he were sleeping. And now that he looked closer, he was, chest rising and falling slowly.

“We wined, we dined, she thought she was the first person to have the bright idea to drug me and forgot that such a thing doesn’t actually stop me from attacking someone, unless they order it.” He made a derisive noise. “Amateur.”

Artemis swallowed back a reflexive clench in his stomach. Such concoctions were alarmingly common down here and repulsed him on a more visceral level than knives and toxins. He could fight off someone with a blade, he could cure himself of poison, he could resist torture. The thought of someone stripping his willpower away was-

"Are you hurt?" He spoke mostly to distract himself. 

"I have a dislocated shoulder." Jarlaxle sounded surprisingly smug and he was giving up a lot of information very freely. "She wasn't pleased when she realized I had poisoned her. She meant to poison him, and compel me to stab him so that she could kill me in turn without the Bregan D’aerthe starting a war over it."

"Why?"

Jarlaxle blinked at him. 

"I annoy a great many people."

Artemis had to admit that was true, if perhaps not quite in the way Jarlaxle meant. He moved forwards into the room proper.

“You should stop drinking that.”

“It’s already in my system and it seems a shame to waste the wine.” But he did set the glass down. And still he didn’t get up. 

"She told you not to move." 

"Something like." Jarlaxle smiled surprisingly brightly and his expression was almost fond. "But this one was cheap if very strong. It has a flaw. Now that she's dead the bond passes onto the next person I see."

Artemis closed his eyes. 

"You are _joking_ me."

"No I’m not. There was a truth serum in there too." He sniffed delicately, as if offended. “Honestly I am surprised there was room in the glass for the wine.”

A part of him thought grimly that it said much of drow, that Jarlaxle would trust a human assassin over his underlings.

"How long does it last?"

"A few more hours.” The white feather shifted as he inclined his head. “I would like to go home, if you will give the word." 

_I would like to go home too. I could make you let me go._

But back to what, exactly? He hadn’t had a genuine challenge for years, nothing to truly test himself against. Just an endless daze of mediocre contracts. People died so easily, guards didn’t know to look into the shadows, he escaped incompetent watchmen with ease and then he awaited his next job. His attempts to work independently had all come to ruin. And so he had simply…existed from day to day, and looked at the hawks that the nobles kept to hunt. A lesser man would have turned to drink. 

Besides. Jarlaxle was occasionally funny and it had been some time indeed since he had laughed so much as he did now. 

_“Abbil?”_ His smile was fading a little. “Can I get up? My leg is cramping.”

Gods, who wanted this in a partner? He nodded and extended a hand to pull Jarlaxle up, surprised as always by how strong his grip was. The drow immediately started to fuss at his clothes, adjusting his hat.

"Come on, you can do that later."

Jarlaxle stopped halfway through pinning his brooch back on and Artemis swore softly, rethreading his words. 

“Let’s leave now and you can fix your clothes whenever you want.” 

Jarlaxle smiled a little at his struggles. It was a strange expression, softer around the edges than Artemis was used to seeing on him. 

“So considerate. Oh! Wait-" and turning away towards the drow in the bed Jarlaxle drew a dagger. 

“Are you trying to steal my job now?”

But Jarlaxle instead pressed the hilt into the sleeping Mizzan’s hand and stood back, clearly pleased with himself.

“There! Now it will look like he killed her. And he will either have to submit to the incoming woman and hope she has a taste for older menfolk, or come running to me.” 

“And you can ransom him back for gold.” 

“Perhaps. Although I do think he is worth more in the long run, don’t you? The artstyle is very popular, but it could do with some controversy. A little bit of colour, a few more men in positions of power, what do you think?”

“I think it’s time to bring us home with that trinket of yours.”

And it was surely some bizarre side effect of the potion that Jarlaxle curled into his side and sighed happily, and seemed to lose his balance as they came out of the portal and had to cling onto his arm to stay upright. He seemed well enough to scan the hallway, ears perked, and Artemis felt the tension ease out of his shoulders as he determined they were alone. 

“Tedious evening.” He suddenly started to fiddle at the buttons on Artemis’ shirt, though they weren’t shiny in the least. “Come in and lie down with me.”

“Absolutely not.” He reached out to lift the eyepatch, peering at his pupils for signs of dilation. “She must have dosed you with an aphrodisiac as well.”

“How dare you, I have absolutely no need for-” 

"You aren't yourself." He twisted Jarlaxle’s hands out of his shirt and ignored his grumble of protest. 

"I am always myself."

"Not now you aren't." Even if he had wanted company, and he never did, the thought of taking advantage of someone was sickening. "It’s just the potion talking."

"It isn't."

And that was worse. He stepped away.

"You'll feel better after you sleep. Goodnight.”

“It could be!” Jarlaxle sighed down the hallway after him. “Goodnight, _abbil._ ”

…

What an informative evening!

Jarlaxle was not intoxicated one whit, for he knew well the nature of his company and both had lined his stomach with charcoal and worn all his strongest charms. That and a quick sleight of hand had sent the potion into Mizzan’s drink, and the man was so exhausted that it had only taken a word to get him to sleep. 

He sent a message to his quickest streetrunners and watched from his study window as they darted out across the clawrift and dispersed into the city. Mizzan wouldn't get far before the house guard caught up to him, not without help. After that, well. He knew of some houses that would appreciate an artist. 

His own included. A sacrilegious thought perhaps, for men did not lead a house. But why not? They did so on the surface after all, Artemis said it was in fact the norm. 

Ah, his human. Artemis hadn't demanded anything out of him at all, despite thinking himself in a position to do so. Not a magical item, not a favour, not even coin or weaponry. That was...so very endearing. Displays of seeming vulnerability might seem a counterintuitive way to win the trust of a master assassin, but Jarlaxle had spent his whole life learning how to read people. 

For all his aura of menace and capacity for violence Artemis was not a sadist and didn’t seem to take especial pleasure in killing or maiming, so much as he did in a job well done. And he wasn’t sure how to approach companionable feeling. He knew the human had spent most of his life alone, aggressively alone, least even the casual friendship distract from him from honing all his skills to a murderously sharp edge. There was something to be admired in that. Too often, the companions of one’s youth only served to weigh one down.

But now he was amongst fighters his equal without the immediate need to kill them to survive. And he didn’t quite know what to do with that reality, how to grow within it. Didn’t quite know what to do with Jarlaxle himself, although he was plainly fascinated by him. A perfectly normal reaction, for he had made himself to be fascinating in all the worst and best ways. 

But such a state of affairs left Artemis a little off kilter, just enough for Jarlaxle to influence him more than any mere human could. It was a great degree of responsibility. He intended to be very careful with it and handle him as lightly as he would a fine-cut diamond. Artemis was more precious than that, after all, in that one day they could be friends. He rather liked the thought of having a friend that could keep up with him. 

But all of those fine plans required time and patience and belonged to the Jarlaxle of the future. The Jarlaxle of the present was much more interested in Mizzan. 

They had run in parallel for some time now, though they had never met face to face before tonight. The family hadn’t allowed their precious artist outside the house, but he had often taken his work to a balcony overlooking their private grounds. And Jarlaxle, being a resourceful kind of fellow, had found a nice nearby laneway from where to serenade him with some well chosen songs. And Mizzan, though the danger was great, had been brave enough to sing so softly back to him. His voice was as lovely as his art. 

It was so terribly repressive to be housebound. He remembered what it was like, walls of shadow and stone closing in around him, swallowing up all his thoughts, every shred of individuality, muffling every sound he made. He pushed the memories back and thought instead most happily of how Mizzan had known him by his voice alone, his hands clenching in his robe for fear the house matron would detect the bond between them. Jarlaxle wanted very badly to feel such creative hands on him. 

And now it seemed that his streetrunners had been successful in finding him, for he heard the clattering of boots and the noise in the lower fortress that suggested a stranger amongst his men. He rose with and took his time searching the wine rack, choosing a good year. Let Mizzan sweat a little amongst his overenthusiastic fans. He in contrast would appear quite the calm and dashing savior to sweep him away from it. Such a chaotic evening and wild greeting by a virtual mob would surely make his company and study a comparative haven while they hashed out the details of repayment and protection. 

And after that, well. Perhaps it could be a good night yet.


End file.
